What Xi wants from Central Asia

President Xi Jinping hasn’t stepped outside his country since the pandemic began. For almost three years, China’s elderly leaders have been swaddled inside Beijing; journalists granted an audience with Xi have told me that they had to go through days of hotel quarantine before the meeting. Today Xi returns to the global stage. His first stop is Kazakhstan, a country rarely on the minds of western politicians. It goes to show how important China’s western backyard is to the country. Washington and London are attempting to pivot to the Indo-Pacific to respond to Chinese influence in the South and East China seas; what they’ve failed to focus on is Beijing’s alliance-building in the mountains and deserts to the west.

China wants to access Central Asia’s store of natural resources (from oil to rare earth metals) and enjoys the chance to play hegemon in an uncontested neighbourhood. Above all, the stans offer China a way to quell its unruly Xinjiang province. A stable Central Asia would weaken regional Islamist networks. If Xinjiang can be made into a prosperous economic hub, the thinking goes, then political dissent could be quelled; further proof of Beijing’s enduring faith in the ability of money to silence rebellion.

After Kazakhstan, Xi will go on to Uzbekistan for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. This ‘league of authoritarian gentlemen’, as dubbed by one academic, was founded by China and Russia, as well as three other Central Asian nations, and its members now include India and Pakistan too. On the agenda this week: the resumption of trade and infrastructure building post-pandemic; the possible addition of new members into the group (Iran and Belarus); and the security threat posed by an unstable Afghanistan. Putin will also be there. He will no doubt lobby for more emphatic support for his war in Ukraine. He’s unlikely to get it: in 2008, SCO member states refused to endorse his invasion of Georgia. So far, China has watched the war in Ukraine, vulture-like, happy to take advantage of cheaper Russian gas while mostly going along with western sanctions. It’s unlikely to leave the sidelines.

For all the talk of friendship between China and its Central Asian neighbours, scepticism remains. On my podcast Chinese Whispers, Raffaello Pantucci, author of Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire, told me that some educated Kyrgyz believe that the Chinese-built roads in Kyrgyzstan are specially designed to carry the weight of Chinese tanks, literally paving the way for invasion. This kind of fear is revealing but misplaced – unlike in the Indo-Pacific, China doesn’t want to push its borders further out west. Instead, it wants and is achieving a pliant and prosperous backyard. You can’t argue with the facts: China is the major trading partner for all Central Asian countries. It is building roads, refineries and railways.

Xi’s trip is also a sign that Beijing is feeling more relaxed about the pandemic – possibly hinting at a loosening of China’s borders next year. Most of all, it’s a victory tour. Unless something goes extraordinarily wrong, Xi Jinping will start a third term as leader of the Chinese Communist party in just over a month’s time. Showing face globally sends a clear message: Xi is here to stay.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation will, this week, be attended by Eurasian leaders, including Turkey’s Erdogan to India’s Modi, a sign of China’s success at building its own members’ clubs. Neither are exactly Beijing’s friends, but their shared interests in more regional trade and stamping out extremism are pulling them further to the east. In particular, everybody wants to talk about how to contain a Taliban-led Afghanistan. That western withdrawal from Afghanistan was supposed to free up resources for America to deal with China’s rise. But instead it has revealed ignorance of China’s geopolitical aims in central Asia – a set of objectives that President Xi is now wasting no time in pursuing.

Listen to Cindy Yu in conversation with Raffaello Pantucci on the Chinese Whispers podcast: